1. Technical Field
Aspects of the invention relate to a printing device configured to print images on printing sheets, a printing system employing such a printing device, a host device for the printing system, and a computer accessible storage that stores a program for such devices.
2. Related Art
There has been known a printing system including a plurality of terminal devices (e.g., personal computers), which are interconnected through a network and share one or more printing devices. In such a system, a printed matter of a certain user may be viewed by other users as the printing device is used by a plurality of users, and leakage of information may occur. Recently, various kinds of techniques are suggested to reduce possibility of information leakage in such a system.
In one of conventional techniques, one using authentication data is known. Typically, authentication data such as finger print data is registered with the terminal device. When printing is performed at the printing device, the printing device requests user to input authentication data. When the user input the authentication data in response to the request, the printing device transmits the input authentication data to the terminal device. The terminal device compares the authentication data transmitted from the printing device with preliminarily registered authentication data, and transmits print data stored in the terminal device to the printing device only if the transmitted authentication data matches the registered authentication data. With this configuration, possibility of information leakage is suppressed.